


Twisted Branches

by bluish



Category: League of Gentlemen (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-08
Updated: 2011-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-30 00:36:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/325849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluish/pseuds/bluish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>dumb thing for christmas because no one is ever allowed to be happy EVER</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twisted Branches

December 24th and he’s writing in his diary. Writing snippets from scripts and excerpts from What Could Have Been.

December 25th and he’s alone again. Why does twenty-four hours seem like an endless stretch of seconds when you’re alone? No-one should ever be alone on Christmas. A phone call, a happy holidays, a silence. A repeat of Oliver Twist on an age old television box. The static buzzing and blurring the little boys’ face. Please sir, can I have some more? “Have some more what, you greedy little tyke? Have some more misery.” A repeat of Oliver Twist off the age old television box. He watches the tinsel wrapped round his door frame like a tight coil, blowing away in the wind. Everything blows away in the wind, even the wind itself.

December 26th and he’s over it. Pastures new, he scrawls, they don’t want me any more. One man shows and one man audiences, the one man being Phil. “Come back Ollie, our writing’s gone down the toilet. And Dave’s losing his mind.” “It’s not the same. You’re settled, move on.” He’d say “don’t leave me like this, all broken and tattered” but he’s got pride or something stored in his defence. Instead he says “have a nice life” and tries not to touch the snowy blonde hair curled round the man’s ivory neck. Tries not to fall apart as Phil echoes his words.

December 27th and he’s pulling the decorations, pulling the pine leaves and the wrapping paper and the 99p cards. Dear Ollie, love Phil and Linda. Dear Phil, fuck you love Ollie. Dear Phil, I love you, Ollie. Dear Linda, I loved you, but then you shagged my best friend. Love Ollie. The envelopes are all leaf coloured against the suffocating tarred bag. Pulling his hair and pulling his jumper, pulling the pillows and pulling himself apart.

December 28th and he’s not getting up.

December 29th and he’s not getting up.

Deecmber 30th and he hasn’t eaten in days. His flesh is hot from his duvet and his too-high heating. His jumper is too itchy, too precious, too symbolic. His lips are all bitten from the worrying. His cups of tea are mouldy and his door is unanswered. “Ollie, it’s Phil. Your neighbours think I’m breaking in. Tell your neighbours I’m not breaking in.” “He’s not breaking in,” whispers Ollie, to deaf ears. The stubborn little wife fucker won’t leave. “What do you want, Phil? What more could you want from me? You’ve taken everything, do you want my house, my clothes, my hair? Tell me and I’ll give you it. I’ll give you everything as long as you ask.” “Stop being so melodramatic. Let me in.” The pine wood opens and it’s like Phil is a blind man who’s seeing for the first time. “What’s happened to you?” “Oh, piss off. I’m not in the mood for a teacher-student lecture. Take what you want and leave me alone.” “Get in the bath, Ollie, you look like a deer who’s been run over.”

He’s in until the water runs all lukewarm and bitter and the bubbles clear away into the murkiness. “Come on, get out, have you fallen down the plughole?” “Leave me alone.” “I have your towel, you idiot.”

He’s in his bedroom until Phil barges in, he’s in a state of undress and unashamedness. “I’ve made your dinner.” “Made it?” “Well. Bought it. But it’s still yours.” “Why?” “Because I left you on Christmas. And I left you without Linda. But I love you and is that not a good enough reason?” “No it isn’t. Because you don’t love me. You’re not supposed to love me. You don’t know that I love you, anyway. And I’m all out of ‘you’re not you’re not.’ I was never very good at getting to the point.” “That’s why you write scripts.” “Shut up, Phil.” And he tries his hardest not to falter and not to stare too long into the cracked lake blue of Phil’s eyes and the skinny pale of his wrist. And he tries his hardest not to frown and close his eyelids like shutters at the feeling of Phil’s mouth to his mouth, to his neck, to his cheek.

“I’m not gay.”  
“Oh, give it up.”

December 31st and he wakes up with Phil’s waist in his arm, his lips on Phil’s chest and a undeniable sense of regret on his skin. Phil looks like a Romantic poets’ wet dream, all fairy-like and surreal, the blonde on white like a lethal type of drug. And Ollie feels like he’s spoiling him with his speckled skin, the blue veins and purple blotches and tanned and pink. Like the mortal lover of some kind of ghost.

“Why are you looking at me?”

“I wasn’t. I was looking at the clock.”

“There’s no bloody clock in here.”

“You’re a bloody clock.”

“Will you come back to Legs Akimbo?”

“If you let us do my script.”

“Go on then. What’s it called?”

“Club Foot. It’s about a bloke who plays golf even though he’s disabled.”

“That’s awful.”

“It’s good! We’ve got the wheelchair already, and that inflatable golf club from the fair. It’s inspiring. It’s theatre in education!”  
“As long as we never have to do White Chocolate again.”

January 1st and he hasn’t slept but for reason. He and Phil are stumbling into love and into another cheap pub. Eight vodka shots, there’s a good man.

“A toast,” says Phil. “To you not being gay.”

“And to you not being involved with that anchor of an ex.”

“I’m still married to her.”

“Oh, don’t lie. Where’s your wedding ring?”

“We’re engaged.”

“You aren’t.”

“We’re partners.”  
“You just aren’t, Phil. You had a one-night stand with her and she’s still there.”  
“A toast. To getting rid of Linda.”  
“And to not being gay.”

A clink and an open door and a firework display. Kissing as the explosions go off and things fizzle into messy drunken mistakes.

“I fucking love you, Phil.”  
“I love you too, you stupid sod. Cheer up for once in your life. Cheer up forever.”


End file.
